It’s amazing to contemplate it today, but Times Square once was a relatively quiet, nondescript residential neighborhood. In 1895, Oscar Hammerstein I — grandfather of the lyricist of Oklahoma, The King and I and other musicals — daringly moved out of the old 19th-century theater district around Herald Square and opened the Olympia Music Hall on Broadway between 44th and 45th streets. A few years later, he built the Victoria, the first great theater on 42nd Street, where mind readers, flea circuses and vaudevillians such as Charlie Chaplin and Houdini enthralled audiences. In 1904, Lord William Waldorf Astor opened the lavish Astor Hotel on Broadway between 44th and 45th streets. That same year, the New York Times — then a struggling competitor to now-defunct papers such as the Herald and the World — moved into its new building, then the second-tallest in New York. The Times tower became world-famous, both as the spot where the New Year's Eve ball is dropped and as the site of a moving news sign that spelled out the great events of the 20th century. (In the movie Citizen Kane, it’s seen as a prop, announcing the demise of the movie’s fictional protagonist.) On the day World War I ended, opera great Enrico Caruso celebrated from the balcony of the Knickerbocker Hotel on Broadway and 42nd, singing the national anthems of the United States, France and Italy.

Since then, Times Square has had its highs and lows. In the 1920s, movie theaters began arriving to compete with live drama on 42nd Street. After Prohibition ended in 1933, the area saw an influx of cheap honky-tonks. In the 1960s and 1970s, Times Square deteriorated and became overrun with street hustlers and seedy porno emporiums. In the 1980s and 1990s, Times Square underwent a remarkable resurgence. The owners of the old theaters began restoring them to their former grandeur, and scores of other businesses moved into the area. In recent years, developers have invested between $3 and $4 billion in sprucing up Times Square and its vicinity.

Among Times Square’s most distinctive features are its more than 50 electronic “super signs” such as the Coca Cola sign and the NBC Astrovision video screen. The massive ITT sign at 42nd and Broadway is five stories high and contains 70,000 light bulbs. Maintaining all the signs provides work for more than 20 electrical contracting firms.

About 22,000 New Yorkers actually live in the Times Square area, in addition to the more than 230,000 who work in businesses there and about 70,000 tourists. An astonishing 1.5 million people pass through Times Square daily — on foot, in autos and buses, and in subway cars beneath the streets.